I've got a lot of guitars and spend more time dicking around with them than playing them. Sad really.

Saturday, September 18, 2010

RS8V setup

When I got my RS8V recently I tried to set it up and found that I couldn't get the action low enough for my tastes.

This was simply because the heads on the tremolo studs were quite chewed up and I couldn't shift them very much with the tremolo under tension. As I wasn't sure if this was because they were stiff or had reached the end of their travel, today I slackened the strings, removed the tremolo and wound the studs down.

It was pretty obvious with the tension off that they're simply a little stiff so I've now got it closer to what I want. There's still a little more bow in the neck than I'd like so I adjusted the truss rod again while the strings were slack.

This still leaves a fair bit of relief, so I may have to revisit this and make a jig to take the tension off the rod while I tighten it. It was getting pretty tight and I don't want to mess it up.

There is a possibility I'll mess the neck up if I go OTT with this, but then again it wasn't the most expensive guitar and I like the process of learning how to make things play better.